I'm not saying everyone must love it as I do. But I think there's nothing wrong with enjoying every bit of it to the fullest. I've loved it every year I've been alive, including this one.

I like the decorations, the lights, some of the music, the food, and the hustle bustle.

I like having a tree all decked out in the living room. My grand kids spent two nights with us and did much of the work. We had a great time with them helping me cook and making plans.

I've cut back to a real looking fake tree now. It's easier than taking a saw and tramping through the cold and it's easier than dragging a real one from the top of the car, cheaper too. I won't miss crawling under it to water or vacuuming the needles. Still, I don't see this as a huge change. I still feel festive and still enjoy the fun.

Every on of my hundreds of ornaments carry a memory. Some of them were gifts from tiny students. They'd be surprised that I still treasure their little construction paper creations. I have many ornaments my own children made many years ago and ornaments from special friends, some who have since passed away. It warms my heart to unwrap and hang them each year.

I can certainly understand why many don't want to jump into the holidays and I can understand it's hard to face traffic and parking problems. It's also difficult to spend if finances are limited. I had lunch with a friend who gives tiny gifts, hot sauce to her son and chocolate mix to her daughter. The cost isn't important. It truly is the thought that counts. A phone call or a note from my kids or grand kids would certainly be special and enough for me. Even though I do get to open gifts every year, that isn'tmy main focus. I just like the holiday and remembering all of the years I loved celebrating it.

I think I'd still like it if I was confined to a bed with no one close still with me. Still, the day would hold meaning for me and I'm sure there would be a tree and some nice music on TV or a radio.

I just don't want to give it up, not yet at any rate.

Does anyone else like Christmas? If so, which traditions are the most fun or meaningful?

I enjoy the Christmas season quite a bit. My ten-year-old daughter is still in to Santa, the Elf who visits, etc. That makes it a lot of fun!

Also, I'm a Christian and I enjoy reflecting on the birth of Jesus. Last weekend I attended a lovely Christmas luncheon at a local Christian church. The table settings were beautiful and the artist who sang a few songs was very talented. It really got me into the spirit of the holiday season.

I like Christmas somewhat. It makes an otherwise dreary season brighter and cheerier by its mirth and festivities.

Enjoyed it much more when my children were young. It was fun playing Santa and surprising them on Christmas morning with their wish list come true.

Loved hearing their little feet scurrying out to see what Santa left well before it was daylight. Sometimes in the middle of the night, and I'd have to order them back to bed. Just like my parents did with me and my siblings a lifetime ago. :)

Love listening to the music and carols. I also enjoy somewhat the Hanukkah season. Though I don't do much for either these days since my children have moved away. Am content with simple reminders, hence those Christmas decorations I've saved over the years remains packed away for now.

I've adopted a family in the south for the holidays. So I have little children to shop for. That brings me joy. :-)

I like Christmas. I enjoy spending the time to pick out gifts for my 14 grandchildren. I listen for clues all year as to what they like, ask their parents, and sometimes I just find something that I know fits their personality. I have been very lucky to have saved all the money I would have paid in tithing for many years and so I can spoil them a little bit.

I like the music...the old time Christmas music.

I have a very old nativity set made out of plaster of paris and sticks that I bought with my temple married new husband at Sears way back in 1970. It doesn't hold any religious significance for me now, but it is a reminder of earlier, simple days as poor college students. It was a splurge purchase but I just had to have it back then. Now, it is just a warm part of the holiday.

I have three grandkids who got married recently. I am giving them all the same thing...a Christmas Village starter set. I have enclosed a letter with each one telling them why I chose this for them. Their great-grandmother who passed away in 2013 at age 93 started collecting and displaying her Christmas village every year and those kids LOVED seeing it when they visited her from infancy to adulthood. I hope they add something each year and carry on the tradition.

I guess it all goes back to tradition for me. The warm memories invoked by all of it helps me forget all the mess we have in politics and world conflict right now and just enjoy the season.

I love Christmas and hope to have a happy day with mom. I sent out my cards today. Our tree has been up since the week of Thanksgiving. The red bows and pine cones decorate our front windows. It's a great season.

there have been a few Christmases that were tough and I just wasn't in the mood. We've had a lot of family drama this year between siblings and had to get a lawyer to take care of it. There have been a lot of bad feelings. My daughter has caused some drama, but things are going okay right now. Found out she was told she needed to repair her relationship with her mother by the old bishop (2 doors down), who she worships. AND my work has been kind of crazy this year.

I go all out. I buy gifts or make gifts for everyone. Last year at the last moment and starting a new part-time job, I made my brother and his family each a small quilt with dog fabric that I saw and just had to use it. They had just lost their dog. I decorate to the hilt. And I give a lot of gifts to my disabled brothers. My kids are spoiled rotten. I even buy my ex gifts. Even when I hated him, he knew if he came home, he would be getting gifts.

I have picture ornaments of each year for my kids from 0 to 20. I don't put them up anymore. Two years ago, I bought HUGE ornaments and have some old stuffed reindeer I put on the tree so it makes that much easier. I also put up the nativity set my mother made me when I was in my 20s. I just don't know what I believe, but I cherish those things my mother gave me. In the bad years, I would work 12 hours a day to earn enough for Christmas and shop on the 20th and take my kids to pick out clothes, and then we'd go eat at the Spaghetti Factory.

Anyway, I have a lot of traditions. This year has just been TOUGH. I'm so thrilled to have my daughter back in my life no matter what the reason.

The only other time I felt less like having Christmas was when I had my twins on November 21st. My ex was involved in a choir and doing night school and . . . and I was so tired. My ex found a tree and put lights on it and that is as far as decorating got. Although I had all my shopping done BEFORE the babies came. My mother used to say that when I showed up on Christmas Eve, I brought Christmas with me. I miss her so.

I love the fact we still keep these ancient pagan nature worshiping traditions alive and just re-purpose them throughout the ages to make them seem more legitimate.http://www.humanreligions.info/christmas.htmlI just wish it wasn't soooo bloody commercial and materialistic, which is why I'm more of a Taoist than a Christian.

> Does anyone else like Christmas? If so, which> traditions are the most fun or meaningful?

Cheryl, you sound a great deal like my wife in talking about Christmas. She likens it to the Wordsworth poem "My Heart Leaps Up" - just as Wordsworth said "Let me die!" if he got too old to be excited by the sight of a rainbow, if she gets too old to want a Christmas tree, it's probably time for her to hang it up as well. She said if she ever has dementia or is otherwise in a state where she cannot communicate, I must put a Christmas tree, lights and all the other decorations up where she can see them and must play Christmas music where she can hear it when it is Christmas time because that is what she wants even if she can't tell me. she was on bed rest during the Christmas season with pregnancy #2, and my nieces put up a tree in her room as well as the ones in the living and family rooms, and it really helped to get her through hyperemesis gravidarium and threat of loss of pregnancy.

We're still doing real trees, but we'll eventually get to the point of realistic-looking artificial ones, I''m sure, and we'll probably wish we had made the switch sooner.

I like it, but I also dwell on the hassles too much. My wife approaches it with childlike delight every year.

My wife really likes lights on the roof. Our roof is steep. My brother-in-law fractured a kneecap by falling off his own roof while putting up lights a few years ago, and his roof is neither as high nor as steep as is ours. At that point, I decided to budget for professionals who are bonded and insured and know what they're doing. I still hope they don't fall off and hurt themselves and prefer not to watch as they're doing the job but it's really their problem. So now Jillian is happy with a beautifully lit roof, I'm happy because I'm not on that roof, and we're stimulating the local economy by patronizing a local business.

I must try to remember how much I loved Christmas as a child. I want my own children to have those same happy memories. Ebenezer Scrooge / The Grinch is undergoing a personality transformation. thanks for reminding me of the positive side of Christmas.

I'm a Christmas fanatic! Don't get me started! Yes, I'm "That" person who leaves the lights up through January. January is so bleak and gray, that we NEED lights everywhere. We have an artificial tree, so we can keep it up longer. The real ones die too soon. We have several large pines in our front yard, and we light them, as well, and they can be seen up and down the street, from each corner. Plus, we have traditional wreaths on our doors and in our windows, and on outdoor railings, and under our carriage lamps. My daughter helps me, and every year our ladder has to be longer and longer, as the trees grow. My children force me to wait until after Thanksgiving, but I put up lighted garlands in my own bedroom.

We have too many traditions to write about, such as sending Christmas cards, baking Swedish cookies, having a gingerbread house making party, going to the Nutcracker in SLC, Zoo Lights at Hogle Zoo, doing Sub For Santa with my business colleagues, Toys For Tots (When we shop for that, we keep an eye out for what the little grandchildren want. They love buying for other kids.) My grandchildren have a piano recital of Christmas music, and they are going to perform in their school Christmas program. When we decorate my tree, the grandchildren get new pajamas, and sleep overnight under the tree. We make ice cream snowballs, with a candle in the middle.

We look forward to our favorite Christmas movies. A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, The Holiday, The Santa Clause, The Grinch cartoon, Grinch with Jim Carrey, Scrooge musical, Scrooge with Alistair Simm, Little Women, Just Friends, Better Off Dead, and tonight we watched Frozen. I enjoy some of the Hallmark Christmas movies.

There's always some good Christmas movies at the theaters. I saw "The Man Who Invented Christmas" with some friends, who are also Dickens fans. The kids are excited for the new Star Wars movie. There's always a Christmas opera.

Both sides of my family have family Christmas parties, which are a lot of fun. One side is mostly ex-Mormon now! They are musical, and we sing and play instruments. The other side is still very Mormon, but the kids enjoy playing with the cousins. Some business friends have a Mele Kamiki Maca (spelling?) Hawaiian Christmas party in their back yard. They have sand hauled in, and space heaters, and fake palm trees, lights and tiki torches, and we drink little drinks with umbrellas in them, and barbecued ribs.

Christmas was almost ruined, sometimes, by the demands that the Mormon church put on me, as ward and stake organist, and accompanist to the ward choir. Too many rehearsals--ugh! I had to go to the dreaded Ward Christmas party, the RS party, the Primary party and the High Priest party, to play Christmas songs on the piano, for caroling, etc. That was too much time away from home, because my kids did not participate in those.

Christmas today is a change from some of the lonely Christmases I had, when my children were with my ex-husband, or away at school for most of the vacation time. I sort of know how Christmas can depress some people. I often think of my high school/college boyfriend, who was atheist, and how we enjoyed Christmases together, skiing, and going into San Francisco. He proposed at Christmas time, in a romantic setting, but my parents had warned me that I had better marry a Mormon RM in the temple, or else my family would be lost to me forever.

Christmas can remind you of your lost loves, or your missed opportunities, or the way things might have been....

This is off the subject of the war on Christmas, which has more to do with overspending. I used to sell in a department store during the holidays and in the summers, when I was home from BYU, and the customers at Christmas seemed very happy, and were much nicer, than the summer customers. There was definitely a "Christmas Spirit" at play, when people were buying gifts for OTHERS.

Christmas brings people together--even in misery. A friend of mine was left at the altar, three days before Christmas. She and two of her would-be bridesmaids get together for lunch on the anniversary of that day, for a "bah-humbug" lunch. It's how she needs to handle it. I used to avoid couples' evening parties, especially church couples parties.

The Christmas Fairy Wrote:-------------------------------------------------------> January is so bleak and gray,> that we NEED lights everywhere.

You're right about January. I will ask the company that puts up and takes down our lights if we can leave them up a bit longer this year. It would be cool to program the pinks, whites, and reds for early february, but I'm not sure the company wants to be messing with lights in February.